


Cats and Dogs

by sister_coyote



Category: Discworld - Pratchett
Genre: Cunnilingus, F/F, Fightsex, Interspecies, Rivalry, Rivalsex, Vampires, Werewolf
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-06-17
Updated: 2007-06-17
Packaged: 2017-10-06 17:46:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/56231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sister_coyote/pseuds/sister_coyote
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vampires are fast and strong and stylish and flawlessly smooth at everything they do, but they lack one thing that Angua has, and that's instinct.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cats and Dogs

The thing about it is . . . the thing about it is, Carrot's a great guy.  He's caring, he's honest, he's understanding.  He always leaves a window open and tactfully ignores the blood and chicken feathers on his bed in the morning.  But he's not a monster.  He's the _opposite_ of a monster.  So he wants to understand, but he doesn't, not quite.

Angua loves him, his unthinking wholehearted goodness, and in some ways she even needs it.  But there are things they're never going to be able to understand about one another, which is why, on this Friday night, when he's pulling overtime to check up on the mother of a murdered young man, Angua's at Biers, nursing a whiskey and lime and trying not to count down the days to the full moon.

She knows when Sally enters the bar without even turning around, because every hair goes up on the back of her neck.  She can always tell vampires; there's a smell of stale blood, and cold flesh, and a faint unnatural _something_ that reaches in and pushes every button she has.  She doesn't turn around, but she can feel Sally getting closer until there's the scrape of the bar stool next to her and a little sigh as Sally sits.

"Buy you a drink?" Sally asks.  Her voice is smooth as blood, with no hint of a growl to it.

The same can't be said of Angua's when she says, "I'm not done with this one."

"Drink faster, then," Sally says, and Angua turns to look at her—to glare, to be honest, but Sally's smiling cheerfully, so it's a joke, so Angua can't find it in her to snap (so to speak). The smile puts Angua at ease at the same time the flash of Sally's fangs unsettles her.  It's a strange feeling, settling in her stomach, at once relaxing and growing more alert.

Sally orders one of Igor's creatively-named drinks—"Graveyard Dirt."  It appears to be mostly rum.

"We were getting along so well there, for a while," Sally says after a long pause.  Angua makes a noncommital noise  Sally continues, "I even threw up a cocktail umbrella with you, and if that's not bonding I don't know what _is_."

"I told you, I don't like—"

"—bondage." Sally's fangs flash again.  "I know."  Angua flexes her fingers around her glass and tries desperately not to think of claws.  And Sally just _keeps talking_.  "I get under your skin, don't I?"

"Under other peoples', you mean," Angua says, nastily.

"I don't try to," Sally adds, with a meekness that's almost certainly feigned.

The thing is, she doesn't get under Angua's skin. It's more like she gets on top of it—an oppressive feeling of _vampire_ that Angua can't get used to, can't come to terms with, and can't ignore.  It fills her nostrils and pricks at her ears and crawls over her skin and makes her follicles sprout and her nails lengthen.  It's something about vampires, the way they're so poised, all the time, while she always feels right on the edge of too much hair and possibly even some drool.

"It doesn't matter if you try to," Angua says.  "You're not stupid.  You know what it is."

"You're saying we can't help hating each other any more than dwarves and trolls can?"  Sally's eyes are slitted, with hints of red.  "But in the Watch—"

Angua sighs.  "I'm not saying we can't _work_ together.  I'm a professional.  I'm saying we can't help not getting along any better than dogs and cats can.  It's an instinct thing."

"I don't know," Sally says.  "At home we had a dog and a cat who got along just fine."

Angua tries to piece together the fragments of her patience, tattered by Sally's proximity and the vampire scent on the air.  "Yes?"

"Of course," Sally says, thoughtfully, "they had to sort out . . . boundaries a bit at first."

Angua's blood seethes.  "Did they?"  She gets to her feet, feeling the uncoiling of muscles, the distant howling of the wolf.

Sally smiles as she gets to her feet.  Angua thinks she can hear the sound of leathery batwings, just beneath perception.  "It was rough at first, of course."

Angua barely remembers to leave the money for her drink on the bar.  "No silver," she says as they tumble out the door.  Limits, limits, this is a terrible idea but maybe if they set limits . . . .

"I like steel better anyway."  Sally sounds breathless, but Angua's not sure whether that's truth or wishful thinking.  "That's why I joined the Watch, right?"

No one's watching them go.  In a human bar, there'd be someone hooting or whistling or asking to join the show; at Biers it's a pretty sure guess that everyone thinks they're going to have a typical vampire and werewolf knock-down-drag-out fight, and for the underside those are standard fare.  Angua's not sure that they _aren't_ going to have a brawl, and that makes it more exciting.  The hair stands up on the backs of her arms and her fangs lengthen and out here, in the alley, with the moon riding high (not full yet, but on the waxing side of half) the transformation just takes over.

To the wolf, Sally is barely visible behind the sprawling, dark miasma of blood and death and skin and cold and sex-smells that spell vampire.  It makes her want to rip out a throat and so she lunges, but Sally is faster—and Sally moves not back but straight up, scaling the wall with inhuman skill and speed.  Angua leaps straight up, and the transformation completes midair so that she's on all four and scrabbling with claws when she hits the clay shingles, and then she's chasing Sally over the rooftops, under the sky, hazed with the coal-smoke and wood-smoke and mist of the night city, but with the moon still clear visible and more than bright enough.

She's not sure after the first five minutes whether she's chasing Sally or Sally is chasing her.  Sometimes she's following the strong blood-magic smell, her mouth wet, her fangs to the wind, hungry—and sometimes she's fleeing a smell of steel and death—and sometimes it seems that they are both chasing and being chased, until the flight ends up, as it will, beside a window with a latch that a paw can operate.  As she tumbles through it onto her bed, out of the gaze of the moon, she changes back and is herself again, and after a moment Sally is through the window, too, naked—which means she must have become a flock of bats at some point, though Angua can't remember that.  Sally rolls off the bed and stands at its foot, as completely comfortable as if she were strolling down the street clothed in broad daylight, not stark naked in a werewolf's bedroom by waxing moonlight.

Angua is also naked but she's not as much concerned by that as by the fact that her hair is a mess, straggling around her shoulders, as it always is when she's been a wolf, or when she's around someone who disconcerts her, as vampires do. Sally's close-cropped dark hair is perfectly in place, of course.  Vampires are always, always, always perfect—tooth-grindingly, hair-pullingly perfect, perfect like satin when Angua's world is more the rough nap of canvas (or fur).  Vampires are fast and strong and stylish and flawlessly smooth at everything they do, but they lack one thing that Angua has, and that's instinct.

She knows Sally wants this, whatever her cool act.  She can feel it, simmering in her veins and racing over her skin, whatever form she's in.  She can _smell_ it.

Angua lunges, her teeth bared even though she's mostly human by now, going for Sally's throat.  She manages to catch Sally and roll her back onto the bed, but Sally keeps rolling, throwing her off.  She winds up on her hands and knees, crouched tense like the wolf she is, ready to spring.  Sally's crouch has a more boneless fluidity, as though the rules of physics are something she has only a nodding acquaintance with.

"We still don't have a paying audience," Sally says. Her voice is silk, or cold water.

"That's not what this is about," Angua snarls.

Sally smiles, and Angua knows then what she's been avoiding thinking about: that she's beautiful, as vampires are always beautiful, perfect pale skin and hair like night cropped so close that Angua can admire the bones of her skull and the lines of her face.  She's shorter than Angua and has more appearance of delicacy, because vampire strength has nothing to do with muscles.  Angua can see her collarbones and the shape of her throat, and her mouth waters, and she feels tall and awkward and yet—not.  She feels fiercely animal and usually that would bother her but right now it makes her feel like she's running through the winter woods at night, her paws breaking the crust on the snow and accepting the pain of the cold and the sharp edges of the ice.  She rolls Sally over, and this time Sally goes with it, on her back, dark eyes gleaming reddish in the moonlight.

Angua kisses her, licks at the sharp edges of her teeth, feels a gasp turning into a little moan as she rakes her nails over Sally's exposed throat.

The best part of it is the way she doesn't have to be careful.  Werewolves can't be vampires and vampires can't be werewolves; fact.  If they could, politics in Uberwald would be very different.  So when Angua tastes blood—animal blood, but for a werewolf that's just as good—at the back of Sally's tongue and all the hairs rise up all over her body, well, it's nice not to have to worry.  Even if she goes furry again she can't hurt Sally worse than Sally can recover from.  And when Sally's fangs graze her throat she doesn't feel the prey-thrall that humans do, but every nerve in her body sings as the wolf tells her that she can't back down from a challenge.

Sally's eyes glow in the dark.  Angua can smell so well it's as good as vision.  There's no need to put on the light.

In the moonlight, out of her uniform, Sally's skin is ghost-pale.  She's _flawless_ in a way Angua (with her scars and her claws and her changeable hair) could never be.  Even know she knows that's not Sally's fault, it makes her mad all over again, and instead of admiring Sally spread out on the sheets she catches her hips and holds her still as she kisses and bites a path from Sally's lips down the tendons of her throat to her collarbones, her breasts, her flat belly, and then drops her head between Sally's thighs, her own wild hair spreading out across them.  She wants to make Sally squirm and shudder and stop smiling that infuriating I'm-better-than-you vampire smile.  Sally's scent fills her nostrils, as important to the wolf as to the human: the sharp clean smell of a woman's body, with faint hints of something wilder, tinted with the coppery sweetness of blood that underlies her every breath.

"No biting, now," Sally murmurs, and Angua thinks _You're not the one in a position to give orders here_, so she nips the edges of Sally's folds.  (The fine pelt of hair there doesn't bother her.  She's dealt with considerably more hair than _this_ in her life.)  Sally groans and laughs all at once and starts to say, "I should have known better than—" but Angua cuts her off by licking her, slow and wet.  Sally's taste is nearly as intense as her scent, and she squirms and makes a tiny noise that is exactly the reward Angua was looking for.

Sally's fingers find their way into her hair, and suddenly she's tightened her grip, holding Angua down, pulling hard enough to hurt.  Angua doesn't try to get away, but her hand digs into Sally's thigh, nails cutting in.  Sally moans.  Angua doesn't mess around; she closes her mouth over the firm bit of flesh and rasps it wet with her tongue at the same time her nails score down Sally's thigh, hard enough to leave marks. Sally's hands release her hair, pushing it back from her shoulders and then Sally returns the favor, digging in with nails too sharp to be _really_ human.  Eight lines of fire burn from Angua's shoulders nearly to her hips and she arches her back but doesn't stop, doesn't stop, keeps her tongue moving at a steady pace and shudders as Sally rakes her nails back up. Angua sucks, swallows fluids and holds Sally's hips down as Sally's nails clench reflexively in a pattern that is not deliberate but instinctual, and Angua's ears prick at the high-pitched noises as Sally comes.

Her back stings.  When she reaches around, she finds traces of blood on her fingertips.  The ache is good, though—she's tough enough to take it, and Carrot would never—would never hurt anyone.  But werewolves are made for a rough life, and —

Sally sits up.  Angua says, "Oh no.  Not without—"

Sally snorts.  "I wasn't planning on—"

Angua curls a hand around the back of her neck and pulls her down, body to body, smooth and cool against her own flushed skin.  Sally kisses her and Angua tastes the elusive flavor of blood again.  She shivers.  Sally takes her time, sucking at Angua's neck, pressing the sharp edges of her teeth but not biting, not quite—but pricking enough to draw blood, and the throb of that and the stead beat of her pulse on her back and the rhythmic ache between her legs all mingle.  She's not going to beg, though.  She's not.  She's _not_.  She —

Sally slides down on the bed, scrapes her fangs over Angua's hipbones and nuzzles between her legs.  The tips of her fangs brush against Angua's slick folds and Angua arches and swears.  "Such language," Sally purrs, mouth and breath warm against Angua.

"Few more years in the Watch and you'll—oh gods," Angua says, as Sally quiets her with a swift, fierce brush of her tongue, and then another, and another, and—she isn't aware of grabbing Sally's hair, would have said it was too short for that, except it clenches beautifully between her fingers so she can hold Sally still because the idea that Sally will tease her is too much to risk.  Sally's mouth is quick and clever, the edges of her teeth just—just—and the flashes of pain in the warm climbing pleasure beat in time with the gashes on her back and the sounds she makes is half-groan, half-howl, her nails scraping against Sally's scalp as she lets go.

Some time later, still sprawled together on the bedsheets, Angua sighs and rolls over onto her belly.  Sally's fingers walk down her back, but Angua's too tired for anything other than a reflexive shudder.  The scoremarks from Sally's nails will be gone by morning, anyway.  "You know," Sally says.  "You may be my superior in the Watch, but I believe I'm about twice your age."

Angua lifts her head to look at her.  She could take offense.  She decides, instead, to say brightly, "I'm about a hundred and seventy in dog years."


End file.
